St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas (1873–1940),monthly magazine for children, was long distinguished for the high quality of its fiction, and its realization that a children's magazine should not “be a milk‐and‐water variety of the periodical for adults,” or a place for “sermonizing” or “wearisome spinning out of facts.” In addition to Mary Mapes Dodge, the editor (1873–1905), contributors included Rebecca Harding Davis, D.G. Mitchell, Trowbridge, Louisa May Alcott, Frank Stockton, Frances Hodgson Burnett, C.E. Carryl, Edward Eggleston, Mayne Reid, T.N. Page, Clemens, Howard Pyle, Stevenson, Henty, Kipling, Cable, Howells, Burroughs, Harte, A.B. Paine, Palmer Cox, and Gelett Burgess. At the turn of the century, when the regular contributions seemed to be less significant, the magazine established a department of contributions from its juvenile readers. Among the authors who thus received their first publication were E.B. White, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Faulkner, the Benéts, Robert Benchley, Elinor Wylie, Edmund Wilson, and Babette Deutsch. After 1930 it changed owners and policies several times, finally becoming in 1939 a picture magazine for very young children.